Beech price per board foot
Plan on about $4.20 a board foot for 4/4 stock at U.S. retail (our 2026-08 estimate — your yard gets the final word). A typical board, 6″ wide and 8′ long, will run you around $16.80.
Sit in a European café and you're probably sitting on beech — the Thonet No. 14 chair, fifty million sold by 1930, is just six steam-bent beech rods and some screws. Beech is Europe's do-everything wood: the Roubo workbench, the wooden hand plane, the spoon in the kitchen drawer. American beech is the same genus at a friendlier price, and American woodworkers mostly walk right past it. Their loss, honestly.
Fine, even texture; turns and steam-bends superbly — the European workbench and chair wood. Moves more than most with humidity.
Beech at a glance
| Price per board foot | $4.20 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 45 lb/ft³ · 3.8 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 1,300 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 11.9% tangential · 5.5% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $42.00 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $105.00 |
What common thicknesses cost
Same 6″ × 8′ board, priced by rough thickness (thicker stock often carries a small premium on top of this — figured on volume alone):
| Thickness | Board feet | Cost | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | 4.0 | $16.80 | 15 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $25.20 | 23 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $33.60 | 30 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $50.40 | 45 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Beech moves. A lot. It swells and shrinks across the grain more than almost any wood on this site, which is why plane makers seasoned quartersawn blanks for years before touching them. Keep it in small parts, quartersawn stock, or conditioned rooms — and it will serve you for a lifetime.
The measured numbers: drying from green, beech shrinks about 11.9% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 5.5% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying beech without regrets
Chronically underpriced because nobody asks for it — which makes it a sleeper for turners, spoon carvers, and anyone building shop fixtures. Keep an eye out for spalted boards: beech spalts into dramatic black ink-lines while staying sound enough to work.
At the finishing bench
Pale, pink, and impossibly even-textured, beech machines to a near-burnish and takes dye like a blank canvas. It's also a classic food-safe wood — your spatulas and cutting boards want to be beech when they grow up.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Red Oak ($4.10). A step up: Soft Maple ($4.25).